In the first light of dawn at Ballarat on December 3, lantern and effigy maker Graeme Dunstan set alight an effigy of Major General Duncan Lewis, the new head of ASIO, at the Eureka Dawn Vigil held at the Eureka Stockade Monument.

In the Courier’s article by David Jeans, Anarchists kick off Eureka 160th anniversary ceremonies, it quotes Dunstan that the effigy burning was to bring fire back into the commemoration, “On the morning of the stockade, there was the smoke of gunpowder, smoke of the diggers fires,” but there is no explanation of why Duncan Lewis was chosen as this year’s “greatest oppressor of Australian rights and liberties”.

But the article doesn’t explain why Duncan Lewis was chosen. For this you need to have read Dunstan’s media release or heard Dunstan’s explanation at the effigy burning. I captured this on video, with a transcription below.

So I say this man who has lied to Australian people about weapons of mass destruction has set us up for permanent war, including Iraq invasion 3, another 200 Special Air Service troops deployed. This is the man who is the most danger to our rights and liberties in this time. This is based on his record, and the new powers he has been given recently. Any Special Intelligence Operation becomes secret which means that all the fighting that goes on overseas has become secret.

One of the activities undertaken at the 160th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion is a relaunch of an expanded memorial to the Pikeman’s Dog.

The Pikeman’s dog – wee Jock – was an Irish terrier that exhibited strong loyalty, bravery and perseverance in staying by the side of it’s master during the Eureka battle and refusing to leave even when the body was put on a dray and taken to the Government camp, then the Cemetery for burial.

The pikemen at the stockade were the true heroes of Eureka, many of whom died in the first minutes of the attack, but their resistance with their pikes against overwhelming odds of the English military carbines provided valuable time for others to quickly ready themselves.Continue reading →

It is the 160th anniversary of the Eureka rebellion in 1854, when the gold diggings took up arms against the injustice and harsh treatment by colonial authorities with the growing push for democratic reforms in the Australian colonies.

It led to Colonial authorities ordering a military attack on the crude Eureka stockade on Sunday – the sabbath day – December 3, 2014. While the battle raged for perhaps 15 minutes, the butchery, burning and pillaging by the Victoria Police continued over a wide area for a couple of hours.

Although 22 diggers bodies were buried in a group grave at the Old Ballarat Cemetery, some rresearchers estimate that with martial law in place many diggers would have gone into hiding and some would have subsequently died of their wounds. The death rate may be over 50, but we will never know the exact number. At least one anonymous woman is knon to have been killed in the battle or subsequent massacre at Eureka.

Ballarat has become synonomous in Australia with Eureka and the roots of the democratic tradtion and resistance in Australia. The stylised flag appears on the logo for Ballarat City Council, Federation University and many local businesses. So you would think the city would take pride in the story of Eureka, the history, the remembrance of those who fell defending their rights and liberties. Yet when Joe Toscano first visited Ballarat on the anniversary of Eureka on December 3 in 2002, he found no events of commemoration on the anniversary date, although Eureka’s Children and the Eureka Museum were holding events on the nearest weekend.

From 2002 Joe Toscano and a small collection of people set out to remember the radical spirit of the Eureka Rebellion on each anniversary on December 3.

What we found over succeeding years as a litany of shame in the local history and heritage and intransigence by the local council in even taking some pride in the Eureka history. In 2013 we found the Eureka Flag flying from the flagpole on Bakery Hill threadbare and in urgent need of replacement. Over succeeding years the diggers grave in Old Ballarat Cemetery has had a lack of mainenaince with weeds and occasionally no flag flying on the flag pole. This is what we found in 2014: weeds, a few old plastic flowers and no Eureka Flag. The soldiers ar memorial – a British war graves site – we found to have been mown recently but no British flag flying from the flagpole.

The streets of Ballarat are awash with Christmas decorations, but the only official Eureka flags or Eureka bunting we saw were at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE) in Eureka Park, on the flagpole at Bakery Hill, and a secondary flagpole atop Ballarat Toen Hall. There was no bunting, no outward sign of the city celebrating it’s historical traditions as a significant birthplace for democracy in Australia.

The Victorian Government in June 2014 funded $300,000 (Ballarat Courier) to celebrate the 160th anniversary. Granted there is a new sculpture – the pikeman’s dog – in Eureka Park and an official memorial service on the morning of December 3, and perhaps money also went to organising other events. But there are few outward signs the money has been spent in the simplest of tasks of maintaining the graves of those who died at Eureka, both diggers and soldiers. This would be scandalous in most countries of the remembrance of such an iconic historical event.

So each year Joe Toscano, myself and a collection of other people, some local, some from Melbourne, and some from even further afield, travel to Ballarat to commemorate the spirit of those who fought for their rights and liberties and were slaughtered and butchered on the battlefield of the Eureka lead.

This is just one sequence of events organised by the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of Eureka Rebellion Celebrations. These series of events have been devised and refined over the last 13 years of activity. Come and join us and celebrate and commemorate the 160th Anniversary of Eureka.

This year the Ballarat Courier has a social media event: Tell the world #whyivote 160 years after the Eureka Stockade, appropriate given the commemoration comes 5 days after the Victorian election. Prior to the Eureka rebellion you were required to be a property owner to have the right to vote. Representatives weren’t paid, but then most had the wealth to afford to govern the colony.

Manhood suffrage came quickly after the rebellion was brutally supressed. It took until 1895 for women’s right to vote in South Australia. Victoria did not grant that right until 1908, the last state to do so. and then until 1967 for indigenous people to have the right to vote. It took even longer for women to be able to stand for parliament in some jurisdictions like Victoria (1923).

According to the Australian Electoral Commission “In 1962 the right to vote in federal elections was granted to Australian Aboriginal women who, together with Australian Aboriginal men, had been specifically excluded from the franchise in Australia by the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902.”

We should also remember that at the time of the rebellion there were many women on the goldfields conducting business and involved in various roles in the Government camp and the miners camp. There was at least one woman killed in the storming of the stockade or savage aftermath of wanton killing by the Victoria Police constables on that day.

Clare Wright’s book The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka is a powerful corrective to the traditional malecentric views of Eureka we have come to accept as history. Women were prominent at Eureka, played significant roles in the youth struggle that was being waged for democratic rights and liberties.

11:30am Walk To Old Ballarat Cemetery To Pay Our Respects To All Those Who Died In The Eureka Battle Who Are Buried At The Old Ballarat Cemetery (Please Bring Flowers)
12:30pm Light Lunch (bring own Food and drink) outside old Ballarat cemetary

1:00pm Walk From Old Ballarat Cemetery through centre of Ballarat to Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka/ Eureka Park to view the restored Eureka Flag
1:00pm – Walk from Cemetery to Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka – MADE (Eureka Park)
2:00pm View Eureka Flag at MADE. Discussion
3:00pm – Afternoon Tea Eureka Park (Bring Own Food & Drinks)

A cardboard effigy of the Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Major General Duncan Lewis AO DSC CSC, (Wikipedia profile) will burn at the Ballarat Eureka Stockade Memorial next Eureka Dawn 3 December.

Over the past five years, effigy burning has become an integral and flambouyant part of the annual 3 December Eureka remembrances; part of the Reclaim the Radical Tradition of the Eureka Rebellion program organised by Dr Joe Toscano, medical practitioner, broadcaster on Melbourne Radio 3CR and Australia’s best known anarchist. (Joe Toscano wikipedia profile)

Dr Joe’s Reclaim program is far and away the best attended, most visible and best known of the on the day and on the site, Eureka commemorations.

“Each year as Eureka season approaches, a conversation takes place amongst Eureka lovers asking: who is this season’s most notable oppressor of our rights and liberties?” said effigy maker and long time peace activist, Graeme Dunstan of Peacebus.com . “We ask 3CR listeners for example: who is the face of tyranny in this time?”

“So many to choose from, of course. Many suggested PM Abbott and Immigration Minister Morrison. Abbott’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, got a vote. But in the end my nomination of ASIO boss Duncan Lewis for burning at Eureka160 prevailed,” said Mr Dunstan, the sculptor of cardboard.

“Major General Lewis has only recently take up the top job ASIO and my concern is not what he done in the job so far but rather what he might do given ASIO’s new powers of arrest and detention and given his track record as a lying Terror War warrior of enormous influence in Canberra,” said Mr Dunstan.

“Lewis is a former commander of Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment and served as National Security Advisor to PMs Howard, Rudd and Gillard. It was Lewis who in 2003 ignored or suppressed the Andrew Wilkie reports from the Office of National Assessments that the WMD intelligence was dodgy; he who advised PM Howard and the nation on the path to invasion and calamity.

“He became Secretary for Defence under MP Gillard but not before his advice secured the nod for indefinite active service deployment in Afghanistan of an 80 man Sabre Squadron from his old regiment, the SASR.

“In protest at military spending cuts required by PM Gillard, he resigned and became Australian Ambassador to Nato in The Hague. It doesn’t take much imagination to see Lewis’ influence in getting a further 200 SASR troopers deployed indefinitely in Iraq and under a cover of absolute secrecy,” said Mr Dunstan.

General Lewis, who has been dressed in secrecy all his professional life, reckons Ed Snowden is a traitor and that the metadata of all our net communications are his to inspect and collect. He wants the internet censored for all lest a few with malicious intent – some time, somewhere and on ASIO’s secret word – use it to plot violence. (Daily Telegraph, November 7, 2014, We’re just one mouse click away from terror)

“Wars without end abroad and terror scares without end at home. That’s the business of Duncan Lewis,” he said.

“By burning his likeness at Eureka dawn we will be remembering that spies and secret police come undone in the story of the Eureka rebellion and also giving notice to Australia’s top spook that he is being watched.”

Photo Opportunity

The Duncan Lewis effigy as a work in progress will be on display
2 pm Friday 28 November 2014
at the Eureka Stockade Memorial
cnr Stawell and Eureka Streets Ballarat

A humorous but informative summary of Eureka Day events in Ballarat at the Eureka Dinner at the Eureka Stockade Hotel by Adam Elliot.

The 159th anniversary of Eureka Stockade rebellion was commemorated with a day long series of events organised by the Anarchist Media Institute from a 4am dawn vigil, Eureka Awards ceremeny at Bakery Hill, a long march through the streets of Ballarat to the Old Ballarat Cemetery, a visit to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka to see the Eureka Flag finally brought home to it’s origins in Eureka Park, the site of the Eureka Stockade; and concluding with a dinner at the Eureka Stockade Hotel with a guest speaker: Dr. Anne Beggs-Sunter on the topic of ‘Eureka plays and films over the years’.

In many countries an event like the Eureka Stockade rebellion of 1854 would be commemorated, celebrated, even revered by the town or city where it occurred. But not in Ballarat. The City of Ballarat are happy to live off the tourism income from the Eureka heritage, even incorporating the eureka flag in their stylised logo, but do little in maintaining let alone building respect and recognition for the Eureka anniversary – Eureka Day. It is a national Shame.

In past years there has been some limited attempt to commemorate the anniversary event with an official flag raising outside the Town Hall, but not even that occurred this year.

The Eureka Flag has never flown from atop the highest flagpole on the Ballarat Town Hall. The Council continues to be in denial of the local and national significance of the agitation and popular rebellion on the goldfields of 1854 and it’s relevance to today.Continue reading →

Maurice Newman, Tony Abbott’s chief business advisor, was cursed at the Eureka Dawn Vigil on December 3 when an effigy of him was burnt.

Lantern, banner and effigy maker Grame Dunstan selected Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s chief business advisor Maurice Newman as the candidate for an effigy to be burnt at the 2013 Eureka Dawn vigil on December 3 in Eureka Park at Ballarat.